The Burial of the Dead
by MrsTater
Summary: Ser Jorah helps Dany lay her brother to rest, and out of the ashes rise new dreams of honor and glory for both the khaleesi and her knight.


**The Burial of the Dead**

Something would have to be done about the body.

The Dothraki, of course, wanted to throw it to the wild dogs that followed the horde, as was customary for those executed within the _khalassar_. But Ser Jorah Mormont knew that while Daenerys Targaryen had unflinchingly watched her husband crown her brother with death, she would not stand by while Viserys' body was mutilated by animals. So, as the unreal hush that had befallen the five thousand assembled to feast in Drogo's silken hall gave way to the din of five thousand Dothraki celebrating that their _khal_had given a fool his comeuppance, Jorah ordered two male slaves to take the prince's corpse to a place where it would be protected from scavengers until it could be properly disposed of after the revel came to an end-which did not seem likely to occur before a new day dawned, the fermented mare's milk flowing as freely and the dancers twirling and thrashing their scantily clad, bronzed bodies atop the low tables as if the feast had only just begun.

For all except its honoree. By the time Jorah had seen to the removal of Viserys, his return to the _khaleesi_'s table found her absent. Khal Drogo had resumed his place with his bloodriders and the other _khals_on the high bench, looking perhaps more proud and pleased than he had even after his wife completed the ritual of consuming the horse heart, but otherwise as if nothing more dramatic had interrupted the feast than if he had caught and killed a bloodfly that had been pestering him. Jorah could hardly blame Drogo for this mean estimation of Viserys, but that was precisely why the exiled knight's eyes scanned the hall for Dany: the man her husband executed without a shred of emotion was the very person she had, only moments before, described with heart-wrenching feeling as being all she had.

In one night, she had been given a new world-perhaps the world entire, if the prophecies of the _dosh khaleen_were truly to be fulfilled by her womb-while at the same time the old world, the only one she had ever known, had been burned to ash as surely as Viserys had intended to wreathe the Seven Kingdoms in dragon flame. And not one person in the five thousand gathered here in her honor understood that she who had devoured a horse's heart had her own shattered, though she had stood there, hard as her precious dragon's eggs. Save for Ser Jorah.

Spying Aggo, one of Dany's _khas_, ducking through the door flap, Jorah quickly went to him, catching him by the arm. "Have you seen the _khaleesi_?" he asked in Dothraki, and the younger man told him that she had retired with her handmaids to her own tent. Jorah nodded, satisfied that Dany had done as he would have advised and gone to rest, yet strangely disappointed that he was not the one to have attended her.

Suddenly drained, and aware of a throbbing in his temples from the noise of the feast and the drama of the night and too much mare's milk, he retired to his own quarters. He would need to be well-rested so that he might assist Dany in whatever way she required of him on the morrow, when grief surely came upon her.

When she sent for him, seemingly moments after he'd stretched out on his sleeping mat and closed his eyes, he found that her grief had manifested in the form of anger. Her handmaid Doreah brought him into the _khaleesi_'s tent, where Daenerys paced to and fro, rubbing her still flat stomach beneath her leather Dothraki vest in agitation.

Without preamble, or even flicking her darkened gaze at the knight, which made him think for the first time that the name given to her at birth, Stormborn, she said, "I told Khal Drogo I wish to give my brother a funeral, and he laughed at me. _Laughed_, Ser-as if I were a child and not the last dragon."

The words might have been Viserys', but somehow they did not sound like the yammering of a fool coming from the mouth of the Targaryen heir's slight sister, scarcely past girlhood. As of last night, Jorah supposed, _she_was the Targaryen heir. He did not voice this thought, however, as she clearly had not yet said her piece.

"Khal Drogo says I may do whatever I like with Viserys' body, provided I do not profane any sacred ground with it. But _he_says it would be more fitting if I threw him to…"

Here she came to a halt in the middle of her quarters, her vulnerability at once belied by hunched shoulders and a quivering jaw and rapidly blinking eyes. Jorah instinctively moved to comfort her, but as his hand hovered over her shoulder, Dany twitched, as if some invisible flick of a pair of reins had recalled her to self-control. She spoke in the tones of the woman who had stood a stoic witness to her brother's execution.

"I know he deserves nothing better from the Dothraki better than to be food for their dogs. Do you think I was not shamed by his scorn for my people? Yet it was because I loved him that his behavior brought me shame. My husband does not understand how I have no desire to bring Viserys even lower in death than he sank in life."

"_Your husband_," Jorah repeated the words deliberately, as if to remind himself of the truth of them, "and his people have no concept of forgiveness-especially not for a snake who would spew such vile venom at the woman he called sister-who was truly blood of his blood."

Daenerys' eyes welled, reminding Jorah that though she had bravely and admirably adapted to the ways of the Dothraki and carried in her womb the stallion who would mount the world, she was in many ways just a girl who had lost the only family she had ever known. Jorah wished he had not reminded her of the hurt Viserys inflicted on her at the very end.

But then she blinked back her tears and met the knight's gaze with as much composure as she had watched her brother die.

"If _you_died in disgrace and exile, Ser Jorah, would it not comfort you to know that you had one person who would, at least, honor your body?"

Jorah drew in his breath sharply, as if she had pierced him with a dagger. At first he thought she couldn't have meant to refer to his own humiliated status, but her eyes were fixed on him so pointedly that his neck began to prickle hotly, and he could no longer bear to return her gaze, though he forced himself to do so, and even to meet the truth of her words with a slight smile.

"Not all exiles are so blessed as your brother to have someone who would do them honor in death." He could not help but add, "Though I would hope that I might die in such a manner as to ease my disgrace."

Her mouth fell agape, and she looked as if she did not quite know what he meant or, if she did, he had made her uncomfortable. Which was the last thing she needed to feel now.

Sighing, Jorah said, "For what service have you summoned me, my princess? I presume it pertains to funeral arrangements?"

At once Dany's fire extinguished, and she sank down upon her sleeping silks, looking for all the world like the orphaned girl of the ashes in the fairy story.

"I don't know how Targaryens bury our dead," she said, plaintively. "Do you?"

Jorah searched the annals of his memory, but found no information that would be useful to her. "I could tell you how it's done on Bear Island. But as my last words to your brother were that I would cut off his hand if he touched your dragon eggs, I am doubtful that would please him any better than Khal Drogo's suggestion."

Dany had been looking up at him with the wide, hopeful eyes of a girl, but now her gaze flicked downward, and she looked years older as sorrow and weariness laced the slight smile she valiantly attempted. At once, Jorah knelt beside her on the floor of her tent, and took one of her hands in both of his. Her fingers were as dainty as the rest of her, if a little roughened by the reins, so that his long, callused swordsman's fingers completely encased them. He felt her thumb twitch beneath his palm.

"You should rest, my princess," he said. "You've suffered a great shock, and I imagine you slept little last night." When she looked up at him again as if to affirm his assumption, he pressed her hand and asked, "Have you taken any nourishment today?"

Her complexion took on a shade of green, though it might have been a trick of the light beaming through the fabric of her tent. "I fear I might yet bring up the heart…"

Yes, that ritual _had_occurred last night, preceding the feast at which Viserys met his unfortunate end; it seemed much longer ago now that Jorah had watched the girl who had once balked at dried horse meat swallow down the warm, raw heart of one of the beasts.

"Rest, Daenerys." He tried to ease her back against her cushions, but she resisted. "I will go to the Western Market, _Khaleesi_," he said, a little more firmly, "and see a whether anyone there might know the proper way to bury a Targaryen king."

He very much doubted he would find any such person, but he could not bear to disappoint Dany without putting forth an effort-which, perhaps, ran rather contrary to his other thought, which was that a visit to the market would afford him the opportunity to send word to Lord Varys that the Targaryen king needed burial. How could he serve and betray in one breath? He told himself that this was no betrayal-that news of Viserys' death would, perhaps, make King Robert and his Councilors forget the news Jorah last sent and now regretted, that Daenerys' was with child.

To assuage his conscience, he smiled at her and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "And while I am there, I shall look for something that might be appetizing to your tender stomach."

Dany relaxed against him as a look of gratitude washed over her drawn features-briefly. The expression was replaced with the same look of fierce determination that she had worn as she did battle with her stomach over the heart. "Only tender because my son grows within me."

Jorah's lips twitched against a grin at the memory of Dany gingerly chewing dried horse meat with her mouth twisted in a sickened expression before she conceived her babe. She had forgotten it as she would a childhood dislike because she had grown into a woman in the few months since then, and so he, too, must put those thoughts behind him. She was more queen than her brother ever could have been king, had more of the dragon in her silent courage than that of which Viserys had boasted, this woman who loved and honored so fiercely, without weeping.

The knight rose and made a bow. "As you say, my princess."

But as he ducked under the door flap to leave her, he glanced back and he saw how she lay upon her sleeping silks, knees drawn up and one arm curled beneath her head, and thought her tears must come soon.

Sooner rather than later, he feared when he returned to Dany quarters later that afternoon, his errand futile but for the raven he had sent to Varys and the basket of ripe summer melons and pears he presented to her with his apologies.

"I fear I found no one in the market who knows anything of how Targaryens bury their dead-though everyone seemed to tell me how it's done in their own houses and tribes. Forgive me, _Khaleesi_, but the best we may do for Viserys is a simple burial."

Dany, sitting up on her sleeping silks to devour one of the pears, looking alert though not much more rested than when the knight had left her, wiped pear juice from the corner of her mouth.

"A pauper's grave for the Beggar King. Perhaps it is all Viserys deserves, Ser Jorah, but no-he shall have better from me." Finishing her fruit, she cleaned her hands on a towel he fetched for her, then reached for a book that lay open atop a stack. "I thought to look in the books you gave me."

Though Jorah chided himself for thinking like a lovelorn boy, he could not stop the swell of pleasure in his chest to see the princess making use of his bride-gift. But he measured his tones for his reply. "I recall little in them of funerary traditions, but for the rites of the Seven performed for the highborn. Perhaps Viserys would not object to that manner of burial, but we lack Silent Sisters and a septon."

"I found reference to cremations of members of the Targaryen royal house." Dany patted a cushion, inviting Jorah to sit beside her and better view the book cradled in her lap. His shoulder brushed against hers, but she did not move away from him. "And here is a song one of our ancestors composed."

Jorah looked at the page, which was heavily illuminated with the long necks and tails of dragons woven around a text written in High Valyrian, of which he could read only a little, his knowledge of the language limited only to the bastard dialects he'd picked up during his wayfaring in the Free Cities and lands further East. From what he could gather, the song, unsurprisingly, was about dragons and fire, and quite possibly too ironic for the occasion of Viserys' funeral. Musical notations were sketched in lightly above the words, and Dany traced them delicately with the tip of her finger.

"My brother Rhaegar no doubt played this upon his harp," she said. "I wish I had heard him. Did you ever?"

"No, my princess," said Jorah, hating to disappoint her when she looked up at him with hope in her violet eyes, and a clear hunger to know more of her kin. _There_was her grief settling in, he thought. "Even before my exile, I was never high enough a lord for that pleasure. But Rhaegar's reputation as a man who loved his harp more than his lance endures to this day."

This seemed to please Dany and sadden her at the same time. "It's a shame such a man as that never was king."

Jorah murmured his agreement, but did not say that he thought Viserys might not be similarly impressed by their elder brother, or by the evidence that Dany must be very like Rhaegar, though she had never known him.

"I do not pretend to be the musician he was," her voice interrupted his musings. "I never had the opportunity to learn an instrument-but I thought I might sing over Viserys' pyre."

"That _will_ be an honor." Jorah couldn't vouch for Viserys, but _he_would be privileged to have the hearing of Dany's song.

She did not ask him to help her prepare the body, nor did Jorah do so because he sensed presumption on her part that he would. She thanked him for it as they removed the soiled and singed clothing so it could be exchanged for Viserys' best silks, which were hardly in better condition due to his insistence on wearing them rather than the more appropriate Dothraki garb his sister had adopted to ride with the _khalasar_.

"I know you wonder that I should do this, Ser," Dany said working the buttons of Viserys' tunic, gold wrought with the Targaryen sigil. "You never heard my brother utter a kind syllable to me, and by all appearances he sold me to Khal Drogo."

"You have a forgiving heart."

"My heart might be less forgiving if it had not come to love my husband."

It was all Jorah could do not to scowl openly at the _khaleesi_'s words of devotion to Khal Drogo; he had less control over his tongue, muttering, "No thanks to Viserys. It was luck, my princess, that he chose you a husband you were able love."

"Or the hands of the gods, directing him so that the stallion who mounts the world might be born."

Dany finished Viserys' buttons in silence, and Jorah mused on this as he worked in vain to polish the worn boots. In his exile he had despaired that the gods had any use for him at all, and now he was here, in the service of the true heir to the Iron Throne, who, if the crones were to be believed, would bear one powerful enough to unite all the people of the world. But what role Jorah was meant to play in all that, he could not even begin to guess-unless it was to prevent that future from coming to pass. The princess was not the only one of them whose stomach was churning.

Thankfully, her gentle tones interrupted the nauseating line of thought. "Do you have brothers or sisters, Ser Jorah?"

"It seems my mother was cursed with the same affliction as my lady wife-only she died bringing her only living child into this world." He wished he'd spoken more carefully when Dany's hands went to her midsection, which as yet showed no signs of childbearing. "The second bride my father took was a barren one who wore black-the Night's Watch."

"Who took up your rule after you fled?" The fear that had darkened her eyes now gave way to the light of curiosity.

"My father's sister, Maege."

Jorah was so relieved that he willingly pursued the subject of his homeland, even though it pained him to speak about what was by rights his being given over to the governance of another; he ignored a dark whisper at the back of his mind that where before they had shared the bond of exile and the dream of home, Daenerys might now condemn him for the deeds that had cost him Bear Island, when she had been driven from her country from the hour of her birth, through no fault of her own.

"A woman keeps your holdfast in your stead?"

Jorah nodded, smiling in spite of his sadness at the memory of Aunt Maege. " The She-Bears of House Mormont are formidable as any man. Her daughter, my cousin Dacey, will be heir, I suppose. "

"I like the sound of formidable women. But could the Ladies Mormont eat the entire heart of a horse without bringing it up again?"

Jorah leaned toward the princess, and she tilted her head toward his, as if they were in conspiracy together. "Not only that, but I suspect they might be able to tear it from the beast with their bare hands. It's rumored she took a bear for a lover."

Perhaps it was her family heritage, or that her months of living with the Dothraki had hardened her-certainly what she witnessed last night would have done, or destroyed her, which it clearly had not-but Dany did not so much as blink at the bizarre and gruesome images Jorah put forth. Rather, her eyes gleamed, and he imagined her entwined in a dragon's scaly embrace.

Drawing back from her to return to the task at hand, Jorah went on, "Dacey stands six feet in height, near as tall as me, and is almost as broad, too-though lanky as a boy."

"I should like to have your kin on my side."

Jorah looked up again, surprised to find Daenerys' hands idle, her gaze distant. "Do you intend to take up your brother's mantle, Princess?"

"Truly, I never thought of it until this moment. Last night at the feast I thought how I felt like a real _khaleesi_at last, that the Dothraki were my people. I've never had people, except for Viserys. But today I think about my homeland, and I find that the longing for it is as strong as ever it was when I envisioned my brother and myself dwelling in the Red Keep."

"We always want what we cannot have."

Dany's fingers curled around his. "Do you think I _could_ have it, Ser jorah? Do you think _I_could re-conquer the Seven Kingdoms? If my son is to be the stallion who mounts the world, it seems that his father and I must strive to give him at least that part of it."

Looking down at his large thumb resting on the ridge of her knuckles, Jorah replied, "You have a way of winning people over and making them love you, Daenerys."

"Even formidable She-Bears?"

Though he heard the tremulous note in her dark attempt at humor to help cope with her uncertainty and apprehension about pursuing her brother's ambition without him at her side, Jorah found himself giving her a light response.

"If not them, then certainly the He-Bears."

He felt his heartbeat quicken to have taken such a liberty with Khal Drogo's wife, but Dany clearly did not catch his meaning, only giving him a smile without a hint of the blush that should have been the reaction to his flirtation, before her lips once more pressed into a straight line as her gaze fell upon Viserys' golden crowned head.

The metal had so conformed to the skull and face as to make it impossible to remove, at which realization Dany at last showed some emotion, tearful at the idea of her brother going to his grave wearing his mockery of a crown. Jorah did not say that beneath the molten gold Viserys' face was likely burned and disfigured beyond recognition-his chest and shoulders had been charred and mutilated by the gold that dripped from his head and ate through his clothing. Instead Jorah suggested that they wrap the corpse in her brother's favorite cloak, black velvet worked all through with a pattern of red, three-headed dragons, so that it would not lie on its bier in shame, nor Dany's last glimpse of her brother be in that terrible gilt mask.

After they had made Viserys ready for his funeral, Dany returned to her tent in order to rest and take her evening meal while Jorah oversaw the building of the pyre beyond the boundaries of Vaes Dothrak. When the _khaleesi_joined him again just as the last sliver of sun slipped beneath the edge of the Dothraki Sea, casting the pyre in silhouette against, she was dressed the same gown she had worn when Jorah first set eyes on her, at her wedding feast, though it might as well have been a different garment, so changed was her carriage from the last time she wore it.

In only a matter of weeks, Daenerys Targaryen had grown from a frightened child-bride into a queen who approached her last family member's bier with steady footsteps. Her handmaids had bound her hair up in an intricate braided coif, rather than let it flow freely, youthfully as on her wedding day. The sheer fabric, the exact shade as the place in the sunset sky where orange met purple, afforded a glimpse of her breasts, full and rounded by her pregnancy, and might also have influenced Jorah's perception of her age. But as Dany reached out for the torch he held and her fingers closed around it, then touched it to the pyre without a moment's hesitation, he knew she had not matured in body only.

And as the flames licked and slithered across the dry wood stacked around Viserys like a serpent coiling round its prey, she began to sing. Her voice shimmered high and clear above the crackling of the fire, and though Jorah only had the vaguest notion of what she sang-_the dragon walks through his own flame and is not burned_-the speech of old Valyria evoked a power entirely of its own which transcended language plucked at his heart strings. If he had not known better, he would have sworn he could hear the sweet strumming of Rhaegar's silver harp in counterpoint to Dany's singing; but he wasn't at all sure it was only his imagination that a hush had fallen over Vaes Dothrak as the night wind whispered over the grass, sweeping the echo of the _khaleesi_'s song through the great bronze horse gate into the city.

The words Dany had spoken earlier in the day returned to him: _It is a shame that a man who loved song more than sword never ruled as king_. Truly, it would be if such a woman did not rise a queen upon her rightful throne.

Gods have mercy on Jorah Mormont if his own hand prevented it.

"Ser Jorah?"

He had not noticed that her song had ceased, and the pyre been consumed, until she spoke.

"Yes, my princess?" His voice was horse with the acrid smoke and his own inward turmoil.

Awash in the glow of the flames behind her, she regarded him with an expression of such tenderness as made Jorah's breath catch in his chest even as his heart hung there pounding like the hooves of a Dothraki horse lord's steed galloping into battle.

"I would," she said.

"You would what, Daenerys?"

"See to it that you had a true knight's burial. In accordance with the customs of House Mormont of Bear Island."

For a moment he could not speak, but then her warm hand touched his cheek, and whatever had been knotted up within him, like welded iron, melted as surely as Viserys' golden crown did in his funeral fire. There would be no more reports from Ser Jorah the exile to Lord Varys the spider, no matter the cost to himself.

The road home lay in whichever direction Dany rode. And he would ride it with her, astride his horse, or drawn in a funeral wagon.

_~Fin~_


End file.
